Code Epsilon: The Continuing Saga of Samus Aran
by donutmaster
Summary: PostMetroid Fusion. After making a narrow yet heroic escape from the Station, a wounded and exhausted Samus retreats to Earth for some downtime. Fate, however, has other plans, plans that involve the greatest enemy she will ever encounter...
1. The Creature

**Disclaimer: Metroid and all of its related stuff are Nintendo's, not mine**

_Imagine…_

Enter the cold of space, in a field of rock and iron, strewn about the endless vacuum, soaring with deceptive slowness though the misshapen stones, a great beast with skin of steel. Its food is the flesh of planets, its drink their tears. Entire stars have died to quench its desire for heat and energy. It was a thing of a great mind, the most powerful force in the universe. It was truly unstoppable. It could see all things through a trillion eyes, do anything with a trillion hands, go anywhere with a trillion feet. It was curious, in a 'how-can-I-use-this' sort of way. Everything it touched was devoured, eventually.  
Ignoring the moon-sized chunks of stone that shattered against its hide, the Beast settled down and began to eat...

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As you can guess, this is a small teaser to generate interest while I work on the first chaper, which will be coming along soon!

Thank you for reading!

-Donutmaster


	2. A Rough Landing

Disclaimer: Metroid is Nintendo's, not mine

Samus Aran continued the losing battle with the ship's controls, trying to keep the thing on course towards the reassuring bulk of Earth. She was becoming rapidly aware that calling what she was now trying to steer a 'ship' was a major stretch. Blinking and buzzing, a dozen alarms were going off all at the same time. Shields, weapons, everything, in fact, except one of the two engines had either been blown off or had fused into a useless lump. On top off all this, she was exhausted and frightened and angry at the X, the Metroids, the Federation, and the universe in general. A particularly urgent beep provoked from her a groan. Her suit was rapidly running out of intravenous painkillers, which meant that the dull ache of her probably-broken right leg was going to get much worse pretty soon.

A tinny voice rang over her suit's shortwave radio, the only communication device that still worked, claiming to be from Airspace Control.

"Unidentified craft," it said calmly as Samus' ship came tearing into the atmosphere. "Please activate your ship's identity transponder. We are having trouble verifying your ship license."

"I can't!" Samus shouted, all protocol forgotten in the severity of the situation. "The transponder has been destroyed! Clear landing strip 4! This is an EMERGENCY!"

Airspace control said nothing for a long moment. Samus felt the ship speed up as a brake flap gave with a depressing metallic _ping_.

"Negative, unidentified craft," came the reply. "Landing strip is only for Capital and Omnicapital class starships. Visual conformation claims that your craft is a light freighter. Again, please activate your ship transponder and we will assign you a platform,"

"It's _destroyed_," Samus snarled. Her vision was bordered with red as fury charged up from her stomach in great spasms. "Why don't I activate the auxiliary? Because _that's_ destroyed! And my port engine! And most of my brakes! I'm tired, hungry, wounded, terrified _and if you don't clear me for landing on that damned strip I'll do my very best to slam this damned ship into your damned control tower!_"

As she tried to wretch breath from the grease rich air, the operator was curiously silent for a moment.

"You are cleared for landing strip 4, unidentified craft."

"_Thank_ you," Samus said before switching off the radio.

The only other coherent being in the ship spoke at this point.

"That was bit harsh," Adam's voice came from her helmet earphone.

In response, Samus grunted and finally saw landing strip 4 as the clouds exploded away. Her eyesight, focused by fear, could just make out the tiny spots frantically trying to move various crates from the strip.

"Are we going to make it?" Adam asked. "We're going too fast."

"Probably not," Samus snapped. "So let me fly."

Adam stayed silent as Samus, her brow into a determined, grim V, staring at the rapidly approaching ground. She had about a minute left before she was just a layer of grease on the concrete. Her brain finally kicked into action. The engine was too damaged, what she needed was a rapid dispersal of force. She checked the control panel. The port engine was useless, but the reactor was still diverting its chunk of power. _There's the answer_, she thought.

"Shift all the energy to the starboard engine," she barked, trying to stabilize the flight path.

"But that might cause the engines to explode!" Adam said urgently. "They are too damaged!"

Luckily, Adam had no physical body, so he was spared one of Samus' very intimidating glares.

"Just do it!" she howled as the strip bore closer. The engine, already loud to begin with, began to roar in protest as factory safeties were being melted. The words "Caution: Danger of System Collapse" flashed on the engine control panel. To trigger the reaction, Samus would have to throttle the system to max. Her metal-gloved finger brushed against the booster toggle. _Ah…_

Samus jammed the control stick to the right and cut the power for an instant. The landscape wheeled away and the craft turned 180 degrees. She lingered for only a second, watching the parts of the ship drift away. She gunned the engine.

The roaring beginning again, Samus almost blacked out as the tremendous g-forces slammed her back into her seat. The altitude indicator was the only thing that held what little attention she had left in her, and terror galvanized her. _A little more, a little more…_

She pressed the booster button…

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From outside, the view was breathtaking. Samus's craft was dwarfed by the strip, which was designed for the sorts of ships that leaders fly around in, with crews of a few thousand. Those close enough to see, however, still remember the sight. The little spot of blackened steel wheeled around frantically and came at the landing strip _backwards_, the one good engine burning with great intensity. This course of action slowed the craft a great amount, but that wasn't the most amazing part. Literally ten feet from the strip, the entire rear end of the ship blew up, sending molten chunks of metal in every direction. The flame extended no less than a hundred yards, the searing whiteness of the focused force lasting for a split second. Ahead, the ship, dwarfed by the size of the explosion, had stopped heading backwards. In fact, it had been blown a thousand yards ahead, but only fifty more yards higher into the air, and the corpse of the ship spun with illusory peace towards the ground, landing with a _thud_ that could be heard clearly from the main control tower, two miles away

From Samus's point of view, the entire fiasco was shockingly calming. In the moment that the engine went critical, everything slowed down, stretching seconds into minutes. The explosion was of the sort that overrode every sense. The sound was so loud and so quick that Samus didn't even hear more than a dull _whomph_ from somewhere in the bowels of the craft, and then the entire world went white. The last thing she remembered thinking before surrendering to the light was, _I'm going to die…and I don't care…_

_---------- _

Hey, I finished earlier than I thought!

Thanks for reading,

-Donutmaster


	3. The Visored Man

It is traditional for the hero, upon waking from unconsciousness, to be seated amidst comfortable pillows and looking up at a hopeful, loving character that he or she will end up getting together with by the climax of the plot. Samus was of the opinion that Fate had shorted her in this department too many times and spent some valuable energy cursing when she discovered that the sun was not going to shine through hospital curtains anytime soon. It didn't make her feel better at all.

With much effort, she managed to lift her head and gaze around, although this didn't do much good, since her entire visor was filled with warning prompts that jostled and blinked, demanding her attention. A moment's labor resulted in a sudden gush of scorched air that was wretched to the taste, but Samus breathed deep of it. Anything was better than that bitter smell of blood.

She took a tally, dropping her helmet to the floor. Eyes, burning. Ears: Left, bleeding, ringing: Right, bleeding, no hearing. Skin: broken, torn, and burnt. Nose: Swollen, bleeding, and broken. Taste: bitter, salty. Head: spinning, bleeding, possibly detached and floating away.

As various reports continued to come in, she became aware of banging somewhere on the hole. The view port featured large amounts of broken plasteel, smoked to the point of being opaque. Just on the left edge though, were definite signs of blue sky, edged with red. A shadow blocked out the light of the sky for a second. It turned out to be a head, the face blocked by a pilot's respirator and visor

"…_right, okay? …just fine…_" the faceless man called.

In the distance, the banging stopped. Their genesis had been stopped by the heavily armored hull, and proton drills did too little, too slow.

"_…the charges!_" a voice screamed. "_Detonate…my mark…five………three……"_

A boom, muffled to Samus by her ruptured ears, rocked the ship, which Samus was barely aware of.

The light made an entrance, but slowly. The door was stuck and a faint _weeeeee_ of a proton drill indicated the rescuer's attempts to get inside.

"_Hold on! We'll…there!_" the same voice shouted. "_That's enough…aside…"_

The door fractured at the cut points and a piece skidded to a halt beside Samus's armored foot. She looked at it, dreamily.

The faceless man appeared in front of her. Despite his now being right in front of her, his voice sounded as far away as it had when he was outside.

"_Get you…of here!_" Samus made out as the faceless man cut her free of the tangled safety straps. He buckled under the weight of her power suit and swore. The masked face turned up to someone behind her and said something. In her detached way, she felt her limbs being picked up by strong hands.

It did the trick. Four men were able to drag Samus out of the pilot's seat as three more cut a path through the twisted, melted metal to the door and through the gaping hole in the hull itself.

Halfway out, Samus heard the whistling in her ears lessen and, just like that, she snapped out of it.

The horror, lost to her before only partially functioning consciousness, soon became apparent. Whatever the exploding engine hadn't destroyed, the breaching charges had finished off, and she looked up into the visor of the pilot.

"…awake!" he was saying. "Wake up! Speak to me!"

Samus wasn't sure exactly why she decided to say it, but she couldn't think of anything else.

"Hello," she murmured.

The visored head cocked to the side for a moment.

"Hello," he replied. "We're going to get you all patched up. Your ship is scrap."

"Not my ship," she croaked.

"So much for the deposit then," the man replied. He shouted to the other men, who were all generic rescue workers, "Get some water!"

"Not thirsty," Samus whined as someone gently let her head to the ground. She took great breaths of the fresh air. The masked man was trying to pry open the Power Suit with a crowbar.

The suit was losing. It had been designed to stand up to shock, but there is little in the universe that can stand against a man with a crowbar coupled with the intelligence to use one properly. As he got the rhythm, the suit became so damaged that the emergency safeties kicked in. Their purpose was to let the occupant quickly shed the Suit upon major malfunction. Seams released and in some places leaked blood. The man threw the crowbar away and he finished the job with his hands.

By the time the ambulance floated to a halt a short distance away, there was one fully peeled bounty hunter waiting for it. Blue-clad men with serious looks on their faces swarmed out and over Samus. She was put into a stretcher. She faintly felt needles pierce her skin. Powerful anesthetics surged through her, and she began to feel drowsy. The last thing that Samus Aran saw before the darkness closed again was the slamming of the ambulance door on the faceless man.


End file.
